OMG Fireball, Noooooooooooo!

[BartD]

Spell levels as we know are gone, so some rules no longer apply. There will not be separate slots for each level you prepare spells in (I'm making an educated guess because if there were, the game would be almost unplayable).
That means that you prepare spells of any level you want in the same pool of slots.
That in turn means that if a caster has two spells of varying power but otherwise the same, he will always pick the better one.
That means that there is no point in making a better spell version. It's easier and more elegant to just let the original spell scale all the way up.
I hopy my logic is flawless

I hope so too! I am all for fewer but scaling spells.

The main combat spells could work a lot like Bo9S maneuvers, e.g. you can ready a certain number of spells from your known spells and then use each once (or use any a fixed number of times) per encounter before you have to refresh in some manner. This would be really simple, much easier than spell points which is the only other way I can imagine handling 25+ levels of spells.

In addition to those, there may be (much) lesser spells (magic talents?) which can be used at will, and then rituals for really significant effects. I guess only the first ones will be called spells.

I'm really curious how it will all be put together, "fortunatly" we can expect to be teased with hints for many months...

 

[Melan]

QFT, and how!

 

[ThirdWizard]

Spell levels as we know are gone, so some rules no longer apply. There will not be separate slots for each level you prepare spells in (I'm making an educated guess because if there were, the game would be almost unplayable).
That means that you prepare spells of any level you want in the same pool of slots.
That in turn means that if a caster has two spells of varying power but otherwise the same, he will always pick the better one.
That means that there is no point in making a better spell version. It's easier and more elegant to just let the original spell scale all the way up.
I hopy my logic is flawless

I hope it is too!

Here's what I'm thinking:

You've got a 5th level wizard, Magellan. He has a bunch of spells in his spell book, and he's choosing spells for the day. He can cast one spell of each spell level - one first, one second, one third, one fourth, and one fifth level spell. He has plenty of per encounter and at will abilities, so he has less need of per day spells prepared.

He decides to prepare fire blast in his first and fifth level slots, the first level version being a touch range low damage spell and the fifth level version being a medium range area spell. In his second and fourth level slots he prepares a mage armor spell. At second level it gives a creature touched a +4 AC for several hours and at fourth level it gives +6 AC for several hours. In his third level slot he decides to go with his fly spell, giving him the ability to fly 60' for one round.

 

[Baby Samurai]

I seems like they reached into my mind and tried to make my dreams come true – yay!

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Fundamentally, this has meant we've had to abandon some things that might have seemed like sacred cows—fireball spells don't do 1d6/level any more, for example—but it's all in the interest of a far superior play experience.!

This doesn't surprise me that much. A while back there was an article about running a dragon as an effective CR 20+ challenge at a con. In the article, the author (might've been Wyatt, actually) showed how he'd taken the dragons breath weapon (which was somewhere in the range of 20d4) broken it down to about 8-10 dice, and then averaged the rest of the dice and added that on as a bonus to damage.

I thought it was a great idea. GMs have enough dice to roll as it is, and I'm sure we've all had to deal with the one guy who rolls a single d6 10 times? It's pretty ludicrous and takes forever. I'm all for rolling less dice.

 

[FireLance]

Here's what I'm thinking:

You've got a 5th level wizard, Magellan. He has a bunch of spells in his spell book, and he's choosing spells for the day. He can cast one spell of each spell level - one first, one second, one third, one fourth, and one fifth level spell. He has plenty of per encounter and at will abilities, so he has less need of per day spells prepared.

He decides to prepare fire blast in his first and fifth level slots, the first level version being a touch range low damage spell and the fifth level version being a medium range area spell. In his second and fourth level slots he prepares a mage armor spell. At second level it gives a creature touched a +4 AC for several hours and at fourth level it gives +6 AC for several hours. In his third level slot he decides to go with his fly spell, giving him the ability to fly 60' for one round.

Actually, I'm thinking it will be more along the lines of:

Magellan the 5th-level wizard has three slots. His fire blast is a medium range area spell that deals 5d6 damage. His mage armor gives +7 AC, and his fly spell enables him to fly at 60 ft. for 1 round/level.

 

[Frostmarrow]

What happens if they decide to go Magic of Incarnum on spells?

They can't take up a mana point system because that would be like saying we did it all wrong for twenty five years. Mana points are not new in any sense.

However, MoI is entirely new and was pretty well received. If I understand MoI correctly you have a pool of magic which you can assign to different abilities. Say, you want good saves you can to tone down the smiting by reassigning magic.

 

[JDJblatherings]

What if spell damage is tied to spell level instead of character level?

1st level magic missle does 1d6. 5th level fireball spell does....5d6. 25th level hellfire apocalypse does 25d6.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Actually, I'm thinking it will be more along the lines of:

Magellan the 5th-level wizard has three slots. His fire blast is a medium range area spell that deals 5d6 damage. His mage armor gives +7 AC, and his fly spell enables him to fly at 60 ft. for 1 round/level.

With 5 levels of spells, I'm imagining you'll get 1 spell per spell level.

 

[Nebulous]

Heck, this is the part I['m more interested in.

Game breaking spells need to die and die horrible deaths.

Yes, like the scry spells that can potentially ruin high level play--without powerful magic to counteract it. Not that i like high level play that much...maybe 4e will change that.